What Things Are Made Of

Trouble with The Law

18 Trouble with The Law Expect it when you least expect it. —Overheard A potato beetle buzzes up the nostril of a drag queen walking a Shih Tzu. The drag queen grabs her nose and drops the leash, tripping a bag-hag, whose heart stops. The Shih Tzu darts into the street, causing a wreck in which a man loses a leg, a child is paralyzed, a pregnant witness miscarries twins. The Shih Tzu, a purebred champion, disappears. The beetle is traced to Jim’s garden, where he negligently used no pesticide. Soon process-servers mob his door. Several are trampled. His gate was too narrow; his sidewalk, too hard. A serial killer/rapist/cannibalistic pedophile is freed to open up a cell for Jim. His public defender strikes a deal: Jim pleads guilty to one count of shaving against the grain, all other charges to be dropped. He agrees, then learns that, under the New Crime Bill, punishment for his New Crime is to be hanged, flayed, cut down while still alive, gutted, drawn, quartered, and burned. He turns state’s evidence against his neighbor who, without a permit, added a door to his toolshed, and his other neighbor, who called a white man niggardly, and his other neighbor, who canoed without life vests for two stowaway thrips. Jim’s sentence is reduced to quadruple amputation, then to one hour on parole because his cell is needed for a man who wrote a bad novel with someone else’s pen. Lawyers relax outside the courthouse like Sugar Baby melons, growing fat and red-ripe in the legal sun. ...